The Fall
1985 issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, published by the Center for the
Study of the Presidency, had an article called, "Rating Presidents and
Diplomats in Chief." In this article, Presidents are assessed.

In 1948, Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Sr. polled 55 prominent scholars in American history and government, and again
in 1962 he asked 75 to rank Presidents within five categories - as great, near
great, average, below average and failure. Another poll, conducted among nearly
850 members of the United States Historical Society in 1977, asked respondents
to name the 10 greatest Presidents. There were 3 other group polls in 1970,
1981, and 1982, and 12 more individual assessments discussed in this article.
So, out of 18 lists, the results were:

Washington, Lincoln, Franklin
Roosevelt, Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt were on all 18 lists. Wilson and
Jefferson were on 17 lists. Then Truman on 9, Polk on 7, John
Adams on 6, Grover Cleveland on 5 and Kennedy on 2.

No where in this article were the
election results, or voters opinions, considered.

The Electoral College

Because Electoral College vote is the only
measure by which all Presidents can be compared, we devised a formula. The
cumulative percentage of Electoral votes received by a President, divided by
the number of elections in which he received any Electoral votes.

The
Second Term

Not surprisingly, the highest
percentage of Electoral votes were won by Presidents winning re-election:
Roosevelt's second term - 98.49%; Monroe's second term - 98.3%; Washington's
second term - 97.77%; Reagan's second term - 97.58%; Nixon's second term -
96.65%; Washington's first term - 94.52%; and Jefferson's second term - 92.05%.
Then Reagan's first term, Lincoln's second term, and so on.

Conclusion, our greatest
Presidents are the two term Presidents. There have been 16 two term Presidents,
22 one term Presidents, 5 Presidents who were never elected, and two people who
were elected president but were never allowed to take office (Tilden and Gore).
[For purposes of this analysis, which is based on voters
choices, George W. Bush is a one term president, because he was only elected to
one term.He is the only two term
president to have less than a 50% electoral vote
average, less than 17 of the other 21 one term presidents.According to voters, George W. Bush belongs
at number 34 of the 43 presidents so far.]

The Greatest
Presidents

Using average percentage of
Electoral vote, the list of the United States' greatest Presidents generally
agrees with historians. But the voters gave very high marks to two, James
Monroe and Ulysses Grant, who don't appear on any expert list or popular poll.

The list of Presidents and their
average percentage ratings are:

Rank

President

Percent

1.

George Washington

96.14%

2.

James Monroe

90.55%

3.

Franklin Roosevelt

88.32%

4.

Dwight Eisenhower

84.65%

5.

Ulysses S. Grant

75.40%

6.

Bill Clinton

69.65%

7.

8.

Woodrow Wilson

Barack Hussein Obama

67.04%

65.03%

9.

Thomas Jefferson

64.71%

10.

Richard Nixon

64.46%

11.

Abraham Lincoln (75.0%)*

64.18%

12.

James Madison

64.02%

13.

Ronald Reagan (94.23%)**

63.44%

14.

William McKinley

62.97%

15.

Andrew Jackson

60.72%

16.

Grover Cleveland

58.50%

One Term Presidents

17.

Lyndon Johnson

90.33%

18.

Franklin Pierce

85.81%

19.

William H. Harrison

79.59%

20.

Warren Harding

76.08%

21.

Calvin Coolidge

71.94%

22.

Theodore Roosevelt

70.59%

23.

William Howard Taft

66.46%

24.

James Polk

61.82%

25.

James Buchanan

58.78%

26.

James Garfield

57.99%

27.

Martin Van Buren

57.82%

28.

Harry S. Truman

57.06%

29.

John F. Kennedy

56.42%

30.

Zachary Taylor

56.21%

31.

Jimmy Carter

55.2%

32.

George H. W. Bush

Albert J. Gore, Jr. (never took office)

55.14%

54.09%

33.

John Adams

51.45%

Samuel J. Tilden (never took
office)50.90 %

34.

George W. Bush

49.43%

35.

36.

Rutherford B. Hayes

Herbert Hoover

49.05%

48.06%

37.

Benjamin Harrison

45.37%

38.

John Q. Adams

15.79%

Never Elected Presidents

39.

Gerald Ford

44.6%, H

40.

John Tyler

H,S,G,VP

41.

Andrew Johnson

H,S,G,VP

42.

Millard Fillmore

H,VP

43.

Chester A. Arthur

VP

Elected Offices: H= U.S. House, S= U.S. Senate, G=Governor,
VP=Vice-President

* Abraham Lincoln actually had 75.0%, but that is only because the southern
states that seceded from the union did not vote in the 1864 election. Lincoln's
64.18% is based on the number of electoral votes including the South where he
would have lost.

** Reagan's two term total of 94.23% from his two successful elections would
make him number 2 in the Presidential listings. However, he received 1
electoral vote in 1976 from a faithless Ford elector. So, the 1980 and 1984
elections were more like Roosevelt's second and third campaigns. Reagan should
have been nominated in 1976.

What
Washington, Eisenhower and Grant have in common.

Does this list make sense? Is
Grant really one of our greatest Presidents, when his administration was ridden
with scandal?

Yes. Washington, Eisenhower and
Grant all have three things in common. They were the commanding Generals in the
three indisputably "good" wars the United States ever fought: the War
for Independence, the Civil War, and World War II.

Then, they presided over two peacetime
economic boom terms.

Also, according to Geoffrey Perret's biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Grant virtually
invented the modern army organization.

Peace and Prosperity, the two
winning issues in politics

Why is Lincoln so low on the totem
pole? Because he got a lot of people killed. Lincoln was undoubtedly a great
human being, a great person; but no one who leads his country into a carnage like the Civil War, which left scars that still
endure, can be considered a great President. A great President would have
prevented the war. Of course, there was probably no one up to the task.

And why is Monroe so high on the
list? His name is still attached to our foreign policy in Central and South
America - the Monroe Doctrine.

And why is Jackson so low?He committed genocide against the Cherokee
Indians.

Proof That This Election
Analysis has Merit

Does this ranking of the
Presidents ring true? Some might argue that Lincoln is too low, or Clinton is
too high. Remember, these 43 men all reached the top of their profession, so
they are all huge successes by any normal standard.

But the proof that this analysis
of presidential greatness is correct lies in the Winternitz
postulate. Washington and Monroe, the two greatest presidents, bracket the 35
years when the United States was successfully launched as a nation.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Dwight David Eisenhower bracket the 28 years during which the United States
emerged as a world superpower. They were all peacetime presidents for their
first two terms. It was only the impact of World War II that enabled FDR to
disrupt the historical pattern of presidential elections by winning a third and
fourth term.

On the other end
of the scale, look at the 5 presidents who were never elected: John Tyler,
Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, Chester A. Arthur and Gerald Ford. What a collection of non-entities,
especially compared with Washington, Monroe, FDR and Ike. The ranking of those
never elected is based on their performance with the voters prior to becoming president.
(A special note of thanks is
due to Ivan Trotsky of Takoma Park, Maryland; for his
assistance in ranking the non-elected presidents.)

This proves that being elected
President is the source of much of the office's power. Electoral votes are the
most important measure, although popular vote is a secondary standard. When
selecting the most powerful person in the world, having two or more standards
by which to judge is a safeguard.So,
George W. Bush, who lost the 2000 election but was awarded the office by
clerical error, was responsible for the United States being attacked from
abroad for the first time since 1812, launched two disastrous wars, and plunged
the world into the worst economic crisis in seventy years.These events followed directly from the
Supreme Court picking the loser in the presidential race. The Electoral College
was not the problem in the 2000 election, it was the solution; but Al Gore was
too much of a coward, or an idiot, to fight for his victory with all the tools
available.